An estimated eight-foot-long West Indian manatee made an easygoing Monday afternoon cruise past waterside homes along the Amite River Diversion Canal in lower Ascension and Livingston parishes, attracting onlookers to the uncommon visit.
The manatee was one of three spotted by the public since Thursday in the Lake Pontchartrain Basin that Department of Wildlife and Fisheries staff are trying to find and relocate before the water turns too cold, officials said.
Others were seen Sunday near Marina Road in Chalmette and on Thursday next to the Causeway Bridge near Metairie, he said, and all are candidates to be relocated to Florida.
“Staff are coordinating with (the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), Florida Wildlife Commission, Seaworld Orlando, Dauphin Island Sea Lab and Audubon Nature Institute to rescue these animals,” Chuck Battaglia, a wildlife department nongame zoologist, said in a statement.
Though the warm waters of southern Florida are a winter base for the threatened mammals, they can range as far north as Massachusetts and as far southwest as the Gulf Coast, including Louisiana and occasionally Texas, according to the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission.
Retired refinery worker Mike Robicheaux, who has lived on the Diversion Canal south of La. 22 for eight years, captured the sole manatee on video chomping on water lilies along the shoreline between 1 and 2 p.m. Monday.
Robicheaux said his neighbor had spotted the creature first and shot him a text message.
“He said, ‘Dude, we got a big manatee in the canal.’ I heard it and ran outside, and it was just kind of swimming really, really slow, just going up the canal,” he said.
Robicheaux, 69, said he and others tracked the manatee through several backyards, stepping over boat docks as it headed north up the canal along the shore.
Eventually, at the urging of his brother, Keith, Mike Robicheaux wound up in his brother’s backyard where Mike shot the video of the manatee feeding.
“I hurried up and got down there, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is so cool,'” he said.
He said the manatee fed at his brother’s for about 10 minutes.
Kristi Trail, executive director of the Pontchartrain Conservancy, said manatees are spotted periodically in the brackish Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain, though the sighting on Monday in the diversion canal is a little farther west and a little later in the year than is typical.
“But it’s been so warm and dry, I’m not surprised, you know, i.e., the temperature of the lake has not really cooled off,” Trail said. “A manatee is just like other marine life from out in the Gulf coming to the lake, because it’s an estuary and they use that as nurseries and they like the warm, shallow water.”
Battaglia said it’s not uncommon to see manatee during this time of year, even in freshwater rivers, but when the weather does cool, most migrate back east.
“Some individuals inexplicably will linger in Louisiana during cooler months and become cold stressed,” he said.
Manatees can die in colder waters. According to the federal mammal commission, prolonged exposure to water temperatures below 65 degrees Fahrenheit can be lethal.
Robicheaux said he has seen a manatee in the canal before, probably two years ago.
He said he contacted Wildlife and Fisheries officials on Tuesday and they told him and his neighbors to keep watch for the animal so it can be relocated.
Robicheaux said officials told him the white coloring he saw on the mammal was an indication of cold stress.
Weighing as much as 2,200 pounds, manatees “feed on seagrass, algae and other vegetation in freshwater and estuarine systems in the southeastern United States,” according to the commission.
Previously “endangered,” manatees had their status improved to “threatened” by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2017 as populations have increased over the past 30 years. Estimates from 2021 and 2022 put manatee populations in Florida at nearly 9,800, with about 4,630 living on the west side of that state, the commission says.
Boat strikes and the loss of warm water habitats remain major threats to these docile, slow-moving creatures that often float just below the water’s surface.
Robicheaux said a boat strike is his main concern for the manatee that he saw Monday because the canal has so much traffic.
“Even though this thing was swimming very close to the bank, you know, sometimes these boats can come close to our docks,” he said.
Wildlife officials urged residents to call the department immediately about sightings at (800) 442-2511 because delays make it far more difficult to find manatees.